user experience

From a design and development standpoint, user experience is the applied practice of making technology accessible. From an end-user's standpoint, user experience determines how well elements such as layout, graphics, feature hierarchy and navigation combine to make a technology usable and painless.

As with any design practice applied to technology, user experience is a blend of both science and art. While drawing on scientific principles from the fields of cognitive psychology and human computer interaction, the creation of a positive user experiences requires both empathy and aesthetic sensibilities.

As technology becomes increasingly complex, so does the application of good user experience practices become more vital. Apple's continued success in the marketplace serves as an example that success need not hinge on superior hardware, but on the ability to imbue complex technologies with positive, personally rewarding user experiences.

User experience is also a major factor in the blogging and social media spheres: as the quantity, variety and interconnectedness of information increases, so does the importance of good user experience design in making said information more easily accessible. As information sharing becomes increasingly commoditized, the user experience of an online service can become its key differentiator.

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Latest blogosphere posts tagged “user experience”

• Wikipedia BannerI hate banners, but I must say that this one...

  
  6ix Passions — Authority: 137
  Wikipedia Banner I hate banners, but I must say that this one from Wikipedia is well done, simple, compelling and impossible to miss.
  2 hours ago

• What do you think?

  
  We Are Team Rubber — Authority: 124
  A common design question that’s asked is ‘What do you think?’. A question we often ask when presenting design ideas or when the product is publicly launched. The anticipated outcome of that question is often expected to be a lateral answer, best illustrated in the diagram below: But we all know that ...
  10 hours ago

• Symbaloo brings its icon Web interface from Amsterdam to America

  
  Gadget Reviews — Authority: 157
  Symbaloo, a privately funded startup founded in the Netherlands in 2007, is based on a simple idea: Instead of typing URLs or poring through a list of bookmarks, Symbaloo users visually scan a wall of icons that contains links to their favorite sites. Clicking an icon goes to a preset URL.More important, Symbaloo ...
  11 hours ago

• Listen to Luke Wroblewski’s “Impact of Social Models” talk at IDEA 2009

  
  { design@tive } information design — Authority: 130
  As Richard Farson ’s truism “ no one smokes in church no matter how addicted ” points out, context informs almost everything that happens in an environment. Online social experiences are no exception. How a product’s social model is set up can impact not only who contributes, but how much, and why. From ...
  23 hours ago

• Google Visual Search: AR 1.5 and Beyond

  
  Internet2Go - An Opus Research Advisory Service - — Authority: 134
  With the debut of Google Goggles/Visual Search weve seen the immediate (and maybe long-term) future of augmented reality (AR). The apps that show you restaurant reviews floating in space or Tweets in mid air are novel and fun yet ultimately not very useful. As I previously wrote, " augmented reality 1.0" is what we ...
  1 day ago

• Tablets as Really Big Smartphones

  
  Internet2Go - An Opus Research Advisory Service - — Authority: 134
  As Ive said many times, Im fascinated by the "two-device scenario": one mobile device for calling and one for Internet. The myriad eReaders now emerging promise to evolve into full-blown Internet devices in the near future but the CrunchPad (now called JooJoo ) is a Internet-centric tablet that could potentially ...
  1 day ago

• Skpe Rising: Online and on the Handset

  
  Internet2Go - An Opus Research Advisory Service - — Authority: 134
  Consumer inhibitions against using VoIP are falling away rapidly, especially as call quality improves. Google recently acquired Gizmo5 to enable Google Voice to become a Skype-like calling platform. And Skype itself is making a big push (now as an independent company) to grow its paid services. I find myself making ...
  1 day ago

• Trulia looks to capitalize with iPhone app and mobile web upgrades

  
  Gadget Reviews — Authority: 157
  Bookmark this categoryThe National Association of Realtors’ Pending Home Sales Index, a leading indicator of housing activity, is on the rise. With housing activity heating up, it’s no surprise that Trulia, a real estate search engine, today released its upgraded iPhone application and new mobile version of its ...
  1 day ago

• Fighting fraud online: taking "Google Money" scammers to court

  
  WORDPRESS-TEMPLATES-PLUGINS-RSS — Authority: 152
  Fighting fraud online: taking "Google Money" scammers to court “Use Google to Make 1000s of Dollars!” or “Easy Cash with Google: You Could be Making up to $978 a Day Working from Home!” You may have seen offers like these using Google’s name or logo that sounded too good to be true. Unfortunately, nearly ...
  1 day ago

• NAVTEQ Is Microsofts Maps Imaging Partner

  
  Internet2Go - An Opus Research Advisory Service - — Authority: 134
  Last week Microsoft launched Bing Maps super-cool new and improved features, including real-time local Twitter feeds on the map. Ive written about them in some detail at Search Engine Land. read more
  2 days ago

• Twitter and your new job

  
  Eclectic Dreams — Authority: 92
  Recently I gave up the life of a University web developer and moved to the exiting world of semantic web and library web services.One of the nice things about the whole experience has been that Twitter has worked as a great bridge into the new role. It’s that whole ambient intimacy thing. Before I’d even [...]
  2 days ago

• WebCast Recap: New Investor Tools. Peer Investing Made Easy

  
  Lending Club — Authority: 453
  Last Thursday, we hosted a WebCast with our special guest Rob Garcia to demonstrate how investors with different investment profiles (loan picker, diversifier, and diversipicker) can use our new investor interface. Participants were shown how the new tools can help to quickly identify notes they may be interested in ...
  2 days ago

• Real-time search won’t kill journalism

  
  Gadget Reviews — Authority: 157
  Bookmark this categoryGoogle just announced that it’s adding real-time news and updates to its search results, which prompted some of the journalists at the Mountain View, Calif. press event to wonder, “What does that mean for us?” Specifically, one reporter asked whether these real-time results will “kill ...
  2 days ago

• Yelp Launches Android App

  
  Internet2Go - An Opus Research Advisory Service - — Authority: 134
  Yelp has gone from a company that just a couple of years ago was relatively passive about mobile -- people at Palm were the ones that got Yelp Mobile going -- to one that now is intensely focused on mobile and has apps for iPhone, Blackberry, Palm Pre and mobile Web. Today Yelp extended that to Android. It offers ...
  2 days ago

• Sharing Rules based on Record Type

  
  Salesforce IdeaExchange — Authority: 134
  It would be really nice and beneficial to allow admins to breakdown the sharing rules based on record type instead of a general category. We have 2 different record types for opportunities, one all users need to see and one thats restricted; however, the sharing rules only allow for me to say mark ALL opps private ...
  2 days ago

• Will Aardvark Sell for $30 Million?

  
  Internet2Go - An Opus Research Advisory Service - — Authority: 134
  TechCrunch is reporting a rumor that answer community and social search tool Aarvark is considering a $30 million buyout offer from Google: Social search service Aardvark is considering accepting a $30+ million offer by Google, say multiple sources close to the companies (one source says it’s $40 million). The ...
  2 days ago

• iPod Touch Cultivating Future iPhone Buyers

  
  Internet2Go - An Opus Research Advisory Service - — Authority: 134
  There are roughly 58 million iPhone OS devices sold through the end of Q3. Mobile analytics provider Flurry "estimates that just over 40%, around 24 million are iPod touch devices." Most of the iPod Touch users are younger than iPhone owners -- many parents have bought them for their kids as gaming Devices. ...
  2 days ago

• Project Renaissance Status Update for November/December

  
  GullFOSS — Authority: 419
  The thinning out pro cess for Impress 3.3 is in full progress . Please find the Project Renaissance status presentation for November/December at the OOo Wiki . The presentation provides first mock-ups of  the planned changes. Feedback welcome. Best regards, Project Renaissance Team
  2 days ago

• Google Visual Search: Break Away from the Box

  
  Internet2Go - An Opus Research Advisory Service - — Authority: 134
  As weve argued previously "mobile search" has so far been a small-screen version of its PC sibling: a box producing links and images on a tiny version of a Web page. But as 2010 begins well see "mobile search" start to break away more and more and take on more of the "native" attributes of the handset (location ...
  2 days ago

• Google’s Busy Week

  
  Family Learning Center — Authority: 164
  [IMG: http://www.family-learning-center.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/742d3_Screen-shot-2009-12-07-at-2.31.53-AM.png]
  2 days ago

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